I have a freezer plugged into a GFCI in my garage. The garage is a stand alone circuit and therefore the only way to tell if it is functioning is to physically check it. This is not good and is a potential loss.
I can plug a smart plug into an outlet in the garage that could serve as a canary. If the plug fails to stay connected, then I will know the circuit failed.
My problem is that I can find no way to make the hub check the circuit every 30 minutes to make sure it is still on line. This to me seems like a very basic function that should not be that difficult (hub sends out a ping, if it doesnt come back – it failed so change the status to offline and send an SMS or make alarm sound). However, I can find nothing that will do this.
FYI I am aware of alarms that do this ($10) and a Wi-Fi service ($50), but this is one of the things SmartThings should be very capable of doing.
Also, Edge may allow this – Ibut dont want to wait 1 to 3 to ?? years to wait for a “maybe”, when the capability should be there now.
As @Paul_Oliver noted, for a single circuit most people do this with a battery-operated open/close sensor with dry contacts that will send the ST hub an event report when the power fails. So no need to ping or poll: the sensor recognizes the power change and tells the hub.
People used to cobble something together themselves, but if you’re using the US zwave frequency, the SmartestHouse kit is a good option.
If you want to see some of the older DIY options, they’re on the “power” quick browse list.
I looked at many of these, and tried a few prior to posting. The problem with a lot of them is that they use the older app and have incompatiblities with the new one.
I ordered the SmartestHouse kit, if all else fails I will at least have that ready to go.
Still doesn’t explain why the hub cant be told to poll the device and report back.
It can, with custom code, but that would be increasing the traffic on the network, perhaps by thousands of times, and mesh networks such as are used by zigbee and Z wave just aren’t designed for that. If you need real time polling, use Wi-Fi devices.
This issue has come up multiple times in the last seven years, usually with some community member designing a smart app that would poll everything all the time, the networks having significant issues as well as traffic impact on the cloud, and smartthings trying to shut it down again.
A couple of years ago, “simple device viewer“, a custom Groovy smart app that became very popular, took a very different and clever approach. It just looked at the log that smartthings keeps rather than polling the individual devices, and checks how long it’s been since the last update. That put some traffic pressure on cloud, but not on the individual home networks.
It’s still available and seems to work for now, but it will go away when the IDE goes away.
Use a smart plug and setup an alarm based on low-power draw. Just track it for a few days to see the normal power draw of the freezer and then trigger based on a low water mark. A nice side effect is that it also monitors for device failure in addition to power failure. If the freezer fails, and stops drawing power, you will be notified. Smart Switch 7; Z-Wave smart plug that's smallest and safest
If the power goes out, the plug will not report because unlike the contact sensor devices described above, it is mains powered. So there’s no reporting event to capture the the water mark. I think you’ll need some kind of smart app to make this set up work.
I wasnt going to plug the freezer into the plug – but this might be an idea. I tried something similiar to determine the activity status on lights for somehting diffrent I was doing.
Per the Zigbee 3.0 standard, Zigbee devices are supposed to check in once an hour. You should be able to do something with that.
Polling any more frequently just runs counter to the whole concept of a low power mesh network.
If you need more frequent polling, go to a continuous connection protocol, like WiFi. You’ll use a LOT more energy to run your system, but that may be worth it to you.
Otherwise, the design discussed above where there is an event-driven report when the power is cut makes a lot more sense for a zwave/Zigbee network, and is what most people use.
Otherwise It’s like trying to design a trailer for a motorcycle so you can haul a lot more stuff. Most of the time it’s easier to just borrow a pickup truck.
Well, that kind of depends on where you’re going as well. Anyway, I experimented with my Zooz power strip and found out it reports in every 6 hours. Nice, regular, steady, also too long. I may have to play around with a zigbee device to see if I can get one that reliably reports.
